Rethinking Class in Russia by Suvi Salmenniemi

Author:Suvi Salmenniemi [Salmenniemi, Suvi]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781138277137
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Published: 2016-11-28T00:00:00+00:00

The New Demand for Paid Domestic Work

Since the transition to capitalism in the early 1990s, the Soviet care model of extensive state services combined with kin aid has been supplemented with commercialised private care. Hiring domestic workers quickly grew into a mass phenomenon in the well-off social groups. However, egalitarian Soviet values still influence the attitude to paid domestic labour. Many feel that working as a maid is shameful and also that it would be unthinkable to employ somebody to work in one’s home.

Nevertheless, modern middle-class women try to change the typical image of the Russian wife, who cooks three course dinners, does thorough house-cleaning on Saturdays and does most of the childcare along with her wage work or other public responsibilities. A new image is emerging, where the ideal and well-organised wife and mother delegate part of the domestic chores to paid helpers. This striving is apparent in very different types of households: single women, double earning couples, and families with stay-at-home wives.

The function of paid domestic workers varies with social group. For the very wealthy, hiring a cleaner allows the woman to exhibit a suitable standard of living and to maintain her feminine role as a spiritual and moral helper, freed from providing ‘ground service’ (see Ratilainen in this volume). For the middle classes, however, the reasons are quite different. Harsh competition in the labour market and the difficulty of finding appropriate public child care make it increasingly difficult for working women to balance professional and domestic chores. Housewifery or part time employment provide one solution, but since it implies a male breadwinner it is unrealistic but for a select few. Most Russian women remain oriented towards economic independence and professional realisation and may therefore hire domestic labour to facilitate the daily logistics. In such cases, paid work is an additional help alongside the traditional assistance from spouse, friends and kin.

The professionalised market of paid domestic work – the gradual establishment of recruitment agencies, Internet sites, training courses and cleaning companies – emerged in the mid-1990s during a period of economic involution and unemployment (Evdokimova 2004). At that time, several of the domestic workers we interviewed had recently lost their old work place and were looking for alternative occupations. The dearth of available jobs in the public sector combined with age discrimination pushed them towards the informal job sector. Amongst our respondents were also women of (pre)retirement age unable to cope with their small pension, recently immigrated women, and students. In search of new ways to make a living, these respondents valued their caring skills as ‘natural’ female knowledge. Care work also saved them the costs of retraining while helping them to avoid the least attractive forms of unskilled physical labour.

For the employers, the new agencies provide help in recruiting persons with the right professional and individual qualities. The agencies select their candidates on the basis of psychological tests and may offer qualification courses. Child care can be performed daily by a certified nanny, babysitter or guvernantka, while cleaning work can be performed every second week or daily.

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